Spellbreaker (Spellbreaker Duology, #1)(64)
Master Kelsey. That had a pleasant ring to it. Bacchus stood, feeling a little taller. Feeling . . . indestructible. He rubbed his hands where the drops had been. No trace of them remained. Even after all these years, he still thought it odd how the universe simply claimed its payment in exchange for sorcery.
“Here.”
He glanced up. Master Hill held out a candle. It was nearly used up, enough for a quarter hour’s worth of light, perhaps. White wax and a burnt wick.
He accepted it. “Is the morning light not to your liking?”
Ignoring his question, she strode to the nearest window and opened it, then bid him to follow. “You show great restraint. Most of my pupils jump to use their new magic the second the ink is absorbed.”
He smirked. Glanced at the candle. Tightened his grip on it.
“If you would hold your hand outside,” Master Hill continued with an amused tilt to her mouth. “Ice to steam is one thing, but most solid matter becomes rather . . . animated when forced into a gaseous form. And we must always account for temperature.”
Bacchus nodded. Physics was one of the required courses aspectors of the physical discipline had to study. Leaning out the window, Bacchus outstretched his arm. He noted that Master Hill took several steps back.
Thought moved so much faster than speech. A person could think a hundred things in the time it took for him to utter a single word. With time, Bacchus would be able to think this spell even faster than he already did.
The candle exploded in his hands, sending a flash of searing heat through his hand and up his arm. Enough for him to yelp and drop the inch of wick still clasped in his fingers. He’d admittedly pictured the candle simply puffing away. Saying the magic was “animated” was a vast understatement.
He also understood why Master Hill had insisted he try out the ability on something so small. The candle’s scent lingered in the air as its molecules drifted away. Rose petals and lavender.
It smelled a little bit like Elsie.
Master Hill switched places with him and pulled the panes closed. “How does it feel?”
He flexed his hand. The burns weren’t severe, but would smart for the next hour or so. Could he perform the feat with gloves on, or would that serve only to vaporize his gloves? “Amazing. Thank you.”
“There is a ceremony, of course.” She stepped away from the window and the sounds of the city beyond it. “But you don’t seem one for pomp and circumstance.”
“I am not.”
She cupped his larger hands in her pale, small ones. “I admonish you, then, not to stop here. Continue achieving. Advancing. Fulfilling your potential, because I see a great deal of it in you. There are many in the world who will try to stifle it, because of jealousy or because they think it is not the way of things, but they are wrong. You and I are more similar than you might think, Bacchus Kelsey. And while it may not be your goal to join the Assembly of the London Physical Atheneum, you should always have a goal. Do you understand me?”
She had such a maternal look to her face, such insistence in her pale eyes. Bacchus wondered after her background. In England, as with most countries, only women of fine breeding had the opportunity to become aspectors. Women who already had a step up in life. He found himself very much wishing to know her story.
“I do. And I believe you have much more to teach me, magic aside.”
She smiled, patted his hands, then released him. “I do, if you’ll hear it. I’ll ring for tea.”
She moved to a bellpull on the wall. Bacchus crossed the parlor, looking over the simple but refined decorations on the mantel. A large mirror hung above it, allowing him only to see himself from the chest up. He’d wound his hair back tightly, and from the front, it almost looked like he wore it short, like Englishmen did.
Turning from the mirror, he strode toward the more comfortable furniture. Master Hill had set him up in a hard chair in the corner of the room for the spell. He found an upholstered chair beside a table that had three days’ worth of newspapers gathered in a stack, the newest at the top. A familiar word caught his eye, and Bacchus leaned forward to read the headline.
The Bandit Strikes Again! Workshop in Brookley Latest Target.
“This is why you don’t talk to the Wright sisters!” Elsie spat, throwing the day’s paper on the dining table. “Sixpence says they’re the ones who went squealing to the press.”
“Elsie.” Ogden’s voice was firm but tired. He leaned over his lunch of kidney pie, supporting his head with one fist.
Emmeline, a little taken aback, said, “Well, isn’t it exciting? To be in the paper? Our names are not mentioned, besides. You shouldn’t be so upset.”
Thank the Lord our names aren’t in it, Elsie thought as she dropped hard into a chair and jabbed a fork into her own slice of pie. Elsie was supposed to be invisible. Unextraordinary. Useful to the Cowls. She wouldn’t stay invisible for long if people started taking an interest in her place of work.
“They embellished the lot of it,” she griped, shoving the pie into her mouth. The pastry was warm and flaky, and it dissipated some of her frustration. “They say just enough to stir the imagination, so people think it’s some grand tale. And neither the constable nor the truthseeker confirmed the attack was related to the opus-stealer’s crime spree!”
The reporters had made Ogden out to be some fascinating specimen on par with Viscount Byron and the baron. With their luck, people would start claiming his prices were too high, since he apparently had so much money to sit back on.